“A baby!” guessed the delighted Jimmy.  “It’s a baby!”

“Come in and see for yourselves,” Abel invited, and pushing the door open he led them into the cabin, where Mrs. Abel overwhelmed them with greeting, and brought Bobby forth for introduction.

“A boy, and a white one!” exclaimed Skipper Ed in English.  “Now wherever did they get him?” He took Bobby by the hand, and asked:  “Can you talk, little lad?”

“Yeth, thir,” Bobby admitted, respectfully, “I like to talk.”

“I’ll wager you do, now!  Where did you live before you came here?”

“With Papa and Mamma.”

“What, now, may your name be?”

“Bobby, thir.”

“What is your papa’s name?”

“What is my papa’s name?”

“Yes, what is your papa’s name?”

“Why, ‘Papa,’” in great surprise that all the world did not know that.

Further solicitation brought from the child the statement that “Uncle Robert took me for a nice ride in a boat, but Uncle Robert got hurted, and I came here.”

And this was the sum total of the information concerning Bobby’s past that Skipper Ed succeeded in drawing from the child, though he questioned and cross-questioned him at length, after Abel and Mrs. Abel had told how they found him that August morning.  But Abel and Mrs. Abel, considering these things of small importance, did not mention to or show Skipper Ed the packet containing the notebook found in the dead man’s pocket, and which they had carefully put away.

Skipper Ed did not altogether accept the theory of Abel and Mrs. Abel that God had in a miraculous manner sent Bobby to them from heaven, directing his course from the Far Beyond, through the place where mists and storms were born.  Skipper Ed in his own mind could not dismiss the subject in this casual manner.  He scented some dark mystery, though he doubted if the mystery would ever be cleared.

Abel must needs exhibit to Skipper Ed and Jimmy the boat, and when Skipper Ed saw it his practiced eye told him that the finish and workmanship were far too fine and expensive for any ordinary ship’s boat, and that it was the long boat of a luxuriously appointed private yacht.  Of this he was well assured when he read, in gold letters on either side of its prow, the name Wanderer.

And then they must each try their hand with the beautifully engraved shotgun.  Such a gun, Abel declared, had never before been seen on the coast, and was in itself a fortune.  And Skipper Ed examined it critically, and agreed with Abel that it was a gun of marvelous workmanship, and had cost much money.

“None but God could have fashioned it,” said Abel, reverently.  “It is His gift to the boy, and it will always be the boy’s.  He sent it with the boy from the Great Beyond, from the place where mists and storms are born.  Do you think He would mind if I used it sometimes?”

“No,” answered Skipper Ed, “I think He meant you to use it to hunt food for the boy, so that the boy should never be in want.  God never forgets.  He always provides.  Destiny is the Almighty’s will, and He provides.”